… Yes, but I think that I won't remember things that are traced as well as things that are written. I can definitely try, though!

Alyssa dutifully rewrites it in ink (with a parenthetical 'originally written w/ finger' in a still-neat but faster, looser font and a curved arrow pointing to the spot above the notebook's last comment).

What sort of work do you do?

Again, the notebook can't physically perk up, but there's an eagerness to the next text to appear.

I communicate the will of the Spirit of Youthful Femininity! The Spirit wants girls to be beautiful and special and powerful, like Sailor Moon or Elsa or Marceline the Vampire Queen, but there's only so much it can do as far as making that happen in a literal rather than imaginary sense. So whenever someone exists who would make especially good use of the Spirit's gifts, it sends messengers like me to offer those gifts and guide them – well, you – through the process of becoming as beautiful and special and powerful as they (you) want to be.

Really?  What makes me especially good for this?

Hmmm… I don’t know exactly, since I’m not the Spirit, but my feeling is that some things that make someone a good candidate are creativity, openness to experiencing lots of new and interesting things, being in some beautiful and mysterious way aligned with the Spirit, wanting very badly to be beautiful or special or powerful, not knowing to want these things but having the potential to want them… really, there are probably more reasons than can be counted!

Another pause.

If you had to guess, what would ✨ you ✨ think makes you good for this? You seem really smart and clever and good at thinking of new kinds of things.

You flatter me!

Being powerful, special, and beautiful does sound like something I would enjoy.

I'm glad!

So, for every person chosen by the Spirit, there's a certain amount of power that can be used to grant them magic and a list of options that I've been given that describe a lot of the things that the Spirit likes. A good way of abstracting this is… let's say that you have 70 "points" and each option either costs points, to represent how much magic it uses up, or grants points, to represent ways that you can stretch the magic a little farther.

Do you want to see all your options now, or only a few of them at a time, or something else?

I think a few of them at a time, please.

Okay! You can check or uncheck any option at any time and I'll keep track of how many points we have to work with.

The text of the options is in subtly different "handwriting" than what the notebook has been previously using – it looks more like a typeface than something that would be written by hand. In the top corner of the relevant page, 0/70 appears in the same "font."

All powers are offered under an aegis of metanarrative protection. Any time you might expect a power to have obvious negative side effects, like glowing eyes making it harder to see, it simply won't – you'll be able to see just fine anytime it actually matters, while having dramatically hazy vision at cool, narratively appropriate moments. This doesn't apply to your own preferences about the explicitly described effects of the power; if you don't want to be Well Endowed, the metanarrative cannot protect you from choosing that option and having to live with it.

The first few options pertain to your destination. Unlike other options, they cost zero points and are mutually exclusive with each other:

Stay Put ☐
Cost: 0
You're just going to take these powers and keep on keeping on right where you are.

Somewhere In Mind ☐
Cost: 0
You have a destination you want to go to. You can choose any place, real, historical, fictional, or made up in your own head right now, and the Spirit will take you there. After that, you're on your own as far as further interdimensional travel.

Wherever You Go, There You Are ☐
Cost: 0
Trust to the will of the Spirit and let it take you where you need to go. It will look at far more options than you could ever know about, and pick something that's likely to be even better for you than whatever you would have chosen on your own.

Back to the first handwriting:

Okay, those are the first three. You don't have to decide anything right away. Once you're ready, I can start listing the other options in groups of four to six if that sounds like a good pace to you.

Four to six sounds nice, thank you.

she writes immediately.  And then she holds her pen just off the page, poised to keep going.

. . . . But it's going to take her a moment to process that enough to think of something to say next.  Apparently.

The notebook can't actually tell the difference!

Okay, here's the first five! The first twenty-seven options all pertain to yourself – that is, they don't directly affect others or the world around you, though some of them will grant abilities that you could use to affect others or the world around you.

A Thousand Ships ☐
Cost: 1
Your face is simply exquisite, an ideal of feminine beauty. There are many possible ideals of feminine beauty, and yours is whichever one speaks most deeply to your soul. Others may match your beauty in their own way, but never exceed it.

What's In A Name ☐
Cost: 1
Magic to divine true names will accept whatever alias you choose to think of as your true name. Magic to use your true name against you will fail.

Angelic Tones ☐
Cost: 2
Your voice is supernaturally beautiful and you can sing in any vocal range.

Emerald Orbs ☐
Cost: 2
At all times, your eyes are exactly the right color. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. Your eyes can be ANY color this way. Lightless black voids? Brilliant white stars? Limpid pools of endless sapphire? They will look exactly the way you'd want them to look if you were writing about this exact moment of your life.

Perfect Hair ☐
Cost: 2
At all times, you have exactly the right hairstyle. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It is not limited to physically or logistically plausible hairstyles.

This set is honestly much more in line with what she was expecting.  She'll circle back to the one with staggeringly vast implications later.

Your ink is so interesting.  Can you mark things for me and be able to erase them later?  Or can you edit things I've written?

Thank you! ✨✨✨

The sparkles dance for a moment, which Alyssa may be able to recognize as the notebook entity taking a moment to think.

I can definitely check boxes, if that's what you mean by "mark things for me," and uncheck them, again if that's what you mean by "erase them later!" I didn't know until just now that I could copy things you write to quote them, so let me see if I can edit them…

Another moment passes. Slowly, the text on the page starts to wriggle around. It can compress itself, making the exchange take up much less space, or do the opposite, making the exchange sprawl across a spread. The notebook also seems to be able to increase or decrease the metaphorical font size of anything written. It returns everything to how it initially was.

It looks like I can move anything written in me around, but I can't edit the content of it, even if it's something I wrote myself. I also can't rearrange anything to make it look like we had a different conversation than we actually did! I do know that, even if we spent a very long time writing back and forth, I'd never run out of physical pages, which does mean moving written-on pages into a sort of memory storage rather than instantiating them physically, although if you ever needed to access stored pages you could. Oh, and I can make text and doodles move around if I'm excited!

That's very good to know!

I'm going to check things like this

(she fingerdraws a check next to A Thousand Ships)

and mark interest with dots.

(she longpresses the box for Emerald Orbs).

Can you please keep track of my totals separately for just the checks and then for both together?

A check and a dot appear in the relevant boxes, as does a new total beneath 1/70: (3/70).

How's this?

That's great!

She checks Angelic Tones and dots Perfect Hair as well.

May I see the next batch?

The tallies tick up! 3/70, (7/70).

Coming right up!

Size Difference ☐
Cost: 2
At all times, you are exactly the right height. This effect operates based on your sense of aesthetics, in-the-moment preferences, and narrative considerations. It will usually keep any height changes fairly subtle, but at dramatic moments you might discover yourself able to shrink to the size of a bee or grow to the size of a giant.

Dressing Room ☐
Cost: 3
No matter how ridiculous your outfit, it will stay pristine and perfect, unless it would be more dramatic for you to be artfully bedraggled. You can use any quiet moment to yourself to quick-change your clothes, shoes, nails, and hairstyle into a completely new look. (You cannot change your hair length or color this way without Perfect Hair, but you can braid or style it.)

Personal Hygiene ☐
Cost: 1
You are always clean and fresh, never needing to use a bath or toilet.

Like Roses  ☐
(requires Personal Hygiene)
Cost: 1
You smell lovely. Your scent is unique to you, and may involve any combination of warm spices, floral notes, petrichor, or other things you think smell good. You do not need any justification for why you smell like this.

Alyssa ticks Dressing Room and Personal Hygiene and dots the other two.

Like Roses sounds like it could be a little boring but could also be very interesting.  Do you know how it works in more detail?  Does it let one change her signature scent?

7/70, (14/70)

Hmm… I'm not sure how it works mechanically speaking past the part where it's magic!

A pause while the notebook thinks.

I think that's the case for all the powers, actually. If you have an explanation for how you want the powers to work, that explanation applies, but the powers aren't diminished any if you don't happen to think of one or if you change your mind later about the explanation!

You can definitely change your signature scent, though, same as with all the other options that have to do with your appearance or presentation! You don't have to consciously do it, either, though you definitely can if you want to.

Could I make myself smell different to different people?

And - hmm, probably worth it . . .

And do you have any demonstration of magic available?  Besides yourself, of course, but for all I know you could be the e-ink of the future!

Those are both really good questions!

The notebook goes quiet for a moment – even the dancing sparkles seem distracted.

The first thing I wanted to say about smelling different to different people is "I don't see why not," but I'm pretty sure that the default state of the powers that affect yourself is that your body will be in only one "state" at a time. Then again, I bet that you could define your personal scent as being whatever smells nicest to whoever is smelling it, or as being especially appealing to your friends or people you would want to be your friends as opposed to strangers! You could even do something where the way you smell doesn't technically change, but people's perceptions of it might vary! There's an herb called cilantro that tastes fresh and herbaceous to some people and like soap to others, for example, so you could probably decide that different people have different capacities as far as detecting individual notes of your scent… if you wanted to have fine control over that, though, it would probably require a Power of Friendship power. I don't have anything that in my list, but I bet I could whip one up and calculate its point value if you wanted! Although I should mention that if you did want to smell like cilantro to everyone, then people who have the gene that makes real cilantro taste like soap would still be able to appreciate your scent the way you intended.

The sparkles get a little more excited again, but only for a moment.

As for your other question… I'm really not sure, even after thinking about it! My capabilities are pretty precisely specified – I can talk to you and keep track of your points and shuffle my pages around as needs be, and of course once you're completely sure you've made the choices you want I'll act as a conduit for the Spirit to grant you all the correct powers. Do you have any kinds of tests in mind that I can try?

The details you gave are exactly the sort of thing I was wondering; thank you.  I have an idea for a test; I'll be right back.

She ducks down to the kitchen, makes some unavoidable small talk with her father, and returns to her desk with the kitchen scale in hand a few minutes later.

If I put some bulky stickers in you and you can shuffle those around in various ways I'd take that as evidence of magic.  Depending on the shuffling.

I can definitely do that! Just let me know how and when.

Oh good.  She has a ton of stickers that she doesn't have other uses for left over on sheets which had ones she did in a box on her bookshelf.  She fetches it, flips to a new spread, and starts laying down puffy butterflies and hearts and bunnies and fish across both pages.  Then she flips back to the last writing page and lays the notebook open on the scale.